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Redwork quilt top attributed to Anna Phillips, Town of Wyoming, Iowa County, ca. 1880.

Object name

Quilt top

Alternate object name

Redwork quilt; One-patch quilt; Pillow sham

Maker

Phillips, Anna, ca. 1860-n.d.

Date

1879-1881

Dimensions

75 1/4"L x 67 1/4"W

Materials and techniques

Pieced blocks of embroidered cotton

Current location

Mineral Point, Iowa County, Wisconsin

Description

This quilt top is made up of forty-two pieced white cotton blocks, each embroidered in outline stitch with pink thread. The blocks are surrounded by a border of embroidered flowers. Two accompanying pillow shams with ruffled edges and pink hems are embroidered with cherries and leaves in pink outline stitch.

History

This quilt came to the Mineral Point Historical Society from descendants of the maker, Anna Phillips. According to family tradition, Phillips began embroidering the quilt blocks while crossing Canada in a covered wagon (presumably on her way to settle in Wisconsin). Anna Phillips appears in the 1900 federal census for the Town of Wyoming, Iowa County, Wisconsin as a forty-year-old widow and the mother of six children. The census records her birthplace as "Canada Eng" and her date of immigration as 1879.

Red on white embroidery was a popular trend in American needlework between about 1885 and 1920. Women used colorfast "turkey" red thread to embellish all sorts of household textiles with flowers, animals, and children's book illustrations. Women's magazines, catalogs and retail stores offered both transferable paper patterns and fabrics preprinted with outlines for the embroiderer to follow. Because these patterns were distributed nationally, similar motifs appear on redwork textiles throughout the country. For example, the block in this quilt top depicting a cat nuzzling a horse (third row, fifth block) is also found in a ca. 1915 quilt documented by textile historian Deborah Harding.